Setting Up

The Obama visit Sunday appears to have marked an end to the Senate campaign, with polls indicating the race continuing, or resuming, its swing in the direction of the GOP. A new poll from Politico, taken last night, shows a 9 point lead for Scott Brown. This confirms the signals from Washington, which seem to indicate the Democrats planning for how to move forward with one less senator on their team.

A new InsiderAdvantage poll conducted exclusively for POLITICO shows Republican Scott Brown surging to a 9-point advantage over Martha Coakley a day before Massachusetts voters trek to the ballot box to choose a new senator. According to the survey conducted Sunday evening, Brown leads the Democratic attorney general 52 percent to 43 percent.

It does feel like the Coakley campaign has gone off the rails, as everyone you talk to in Massachusetts says they're voting for Scott Brown, including union members and life long, loyal Democrats.

"I actually think the bottom is falling out," said InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, referring to Coakley's fall in the polls over the last ten days. "I think that this candidate is in freefall. Clearly this race is imploding for her."

The only demographic group that runs close in this poll is people over 65, which is tied.

The numbers show males and independents overwhelmingly breaking for Brown, who has married his GQ looks with a populist tone in a pick-up truck on the campaign trail. Brown holds a 15-point lead among males and crushes Coakley by 41 points among self-described independents, a group that's been steadily inching away from the Democratic party over the last year due to growing apprehension with government spending, bailouts and health care reform.

24% of democrats are planning on voting for Brown, and he leads among 18-29 year old voters by a two to one margin!

InsiderAdvantage's polling pool was made up of 20 percent Republicans and 43 percent of Democrats, though estimates show that independents make up just over 50 percent of all Massachusetts voters. "It'd be even worse for (Coakley) if we weighed it towards more independents," Towery said.

The ARG poll released yesterday also shows a solid lead for Scott.

Other election eve polling is also tracking towards Brown. The Republican pollster, American Research Group, pins Brown's lead at 7 points, 52 to 45 percent, in a three-day survey released Monday. And Suffolk University's polling of three bellwether counties had them all breaking towards Brown by double-digit margins. Public Policy Polling's final survey put Brown up 51 to 46 percent, a lead that falls within the margin of error.

Voters appear to have made up their minds, a job made easier by a barrage of robo calls, attack ads, and visits from Washington pols which fed into the campaign storyline - that Coakley is an insider who thought the seat was hers by default, and Brown is a David fighting the Machine.